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Pioneer manufactures some of the best home cinema DVD players you can get. It was one of the first companies to push component video and progressive scan in the UK, and the general build quality of its products is excellent. Pioneer also (excuse the pun) pioneered the DVD-RW format, and long before a PC drive appeared Pioneer had been producing a home video recorder based on the format, although only in Japan.

Pioneer’s original PC DVD writer was based on the DVD-R/RW format, but this unit will also write DVD+R/RW media. That said it will only write DVD+RW media at 2.4-speed although DVD+R is written at four-speed.

As for other media, the Pioneer writes DVD-R at four-speed, DVD-RW at two-speed, CD-R at 16-sped and CD-RW at 10-speed. Reading is rated at 12-speed for DVD and 32-speed for CD.

Performance is a little disappointing with the Pioneer ranking middle to bottom in many of the graphs. Curiously the Pioneer was the slowest drive when it came to the DVD-RW format but it then proceeded to top the chart for the two DVD-RW write tests. We expected the DVR-106D to perform well in the DVD-RW tests since Pioneer has been developing the standard for quite some time. It’s a shame that the format wasn’t so impressive though.

The DVR-106D isn’t going to set any pulses racing in the design stakes, with Pioneer going with standard PC beige. The front fascia is also pretty basic with a single eject button, a status indicator and a manual eject hole. In fact you’ll probably notice that the Pioneer looks almost identical to the Teac drive. The truth is that they are the same unit, with the exception of the blue Teac logo. That said, the Teac’s superior performance shows what different firmware can achieve.

The software bundle also separates the Teac from the Pioneer. Pioneer has chosen to include Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD 7 to take care of disc burning duties. Unfortunately Instant CD/DVD is not as desirable an inclusion as Nero which shipped with the Teac. So, even if the Teac weren’t the faster drive, the software bundle would still sway us towards it instead of the Pioneer. You also get a copy of Pinnacle Studio 8SE for authoring your own DVD movies.

Considering that the price for the Pioneer DVR-106D is more or less identical to the Teac drive it’s hard to think of a reason to recommend it. If you want a DVD writer with these writing specs, we’d definitely point you in the direction of the Teac instead.

Verdict

The Pioneer can’t compete with the near identical Teac on performance or specification. However, we can’t help but mention again that the far more versatile LG drive is significantly cheaper.

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